A Tour of Chatsworth House - XIV

The Cascade House

William Cavendish, the 1st Duke of Devonshire, was one of the first Englishmen to embrace the creation of formal gardens already fashionable in France, Italy, and Holland and, having briefly explored the greenhouses and Rose Garden at Chatsworth House, I set off towards the Cascade.

A view down the Cascade

These were originally completed in 1696 to a design by Monsieur Grillet, a French hydraulics engineer who was a pupil of André Le Nôtre - the landscape architect responsible for the gardens at the Palace of Versailles. 

The Cascade House

The cascade was then remodelled, with the Cascade House built in 1702 by Thomas Archer and largely completed by 1708. Work continued on the Cascade Pond, which lies a little higher up the hill, until 1712 and Joseph Paxton later made modifications when he drove a tunnel beneath it.

A dolphin and frostwork rustication

With plenty more of the gardens still to see, I didn’t explore the lower parts of the Cascade and only took a few photographs of the views and the Cascade House, where there are carvings by Samuel Watson and Henri Nadauld - a descent of a Huguenot family that settled in Ashford-in-the-Water. These include dolphins, reclining figures and frostwork rustication, a finish in the form of stalactites that I had never seen before. 

A view west towards Edensor

I made my way back to the path and then carried on to the Trout Stream, designed by Paxton in 1835 when he started work on the new Arboretum. It was a huge task involving the diversion of a local stream more than two miles from its natural course on East Moor. 

The Trout Stream

The garden also incorporated elements of Paxton's rockery, including a rock wall and rock stacks made from gritstone transported from Chatsworth. A series of new semi-wild planting schemes along its entire length, designed by Dan Pearson, have been installed since 2016. 

Rock stacks at the Trout Stream

As with the rest of the gardens at Chatsworth House, various modern sculptures are scattered around the Trout Stream and, like at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, they are a great addition to the surrounding landscape.

Modern sculpture around the Trout Stream